SWUG UK Regional Meeting Round Up

Introduction & Welcome

Kirby Downey, SWUG UK Regional Committee Representative
Kirby Downey, Leader of London SOLIDWORKS User Group, welcomed attendees and made some brief introductory remarks.

He thanked DriveWorks and SOLIDWORKS for their support and sponsorship of the event and made a start on introductions.

Joe Lance, Houston SWUG Leader

Joe Lance, Houston SWUG Leader, made a surprise appearance at the event. Following Kirby, Joe gave a brief introduction to the group. Joe talked about how he is always inspired by the power of the SOLIDWORKS Community and was honoured to be with the group that evening. He encouraged people to get involved and stay connected with each other.

Matthew Hall, SOLIDWORKS Online Community Manager

Matt Hall is the SOLIDWORKS Online Community Manager at Dassault Systèmes. Matt started by giving a brief introduction to the group on his role within Dassault Systèmes. He then talked about the many resources available from SOLIDWORKS and Dassault Systèmes, where community members can get information, training and share ideas.

In his role, Matt provides oversight as well as contributions to these areas. During the meeting, Matt shared information about 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS for Makers and offered a free license of Makers as a prize for the evening.

Ian Pilkington, Northern Europe 3DExperience & Simulation Director

It was great to have Ian Pilkington join us for the evening. Ian has been with Dassault Systèmes for many years and has been an active member of the community as well as attending user group meetings. Ian’s role at Dassault Systèmes is Northern Europe 3DExperience & Simulation Director.

During the meeting, Ian provided a brief overview of the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform to the group. He shared how the platform can be used for design works as well as sharing of information, project management and overall organisation of workday tasks.

Theodore Chortatsos, Hellenic SWUG (Greece)

No matter how many SWUG meetings are hosted, a session on SOLIDWORKS Tips & Tricks is always a crowd pleaser.

Theodore Chortatsos Leader of the Greek SWUG group, Hellenic SWUG, prepared a great presentation where he compiled a list of some of his favourite Tips and Tricks that he has learned from other SWUG Leaders.

As he worked through several of the tips, there were contributions from the audience on other tips as well as other methods people use in their design environment – creating a really engaging discussion in the room.

Luke Frost, Midlands SWUG

After a brief break for some pizza and beer, Luke Frost was the third presenter of the evening. Luke Frost is a Design Engineer with Technocover Ltd. (a SOLIDWORKS and DriveWorks customer). As the event was being hosted at DriveWorks HQ, we thought it would be great to have Luke do a presentation that combined both SOLIDWORKS and DriveWorks.

As part of his presentation, Luke covered several areas of their DriveWorks journey at Technocover. Project examples – Luke showed some of the different models that have been created using DriveWorks and shared the importance of best practices when setting up models.

Luke also shared how they have been connecting their DriveWorks projects into SOLDWORKS PDM Standard. Several members of the DriveWorks team attended the meeting and engaged in the technical discussion items during this presentation – it’s always great to see how a customer is learning and getting on with the software.